There’s no official good NPS score. Nobody who owns the metric publishes a cutoff. A score above zero means you have more promoters than detractors. Beyond that, the honest way to judge your number is to compare it with your own past scores, then read any outside figure with its source and sample size next to it.
That’s the short answer. The rest of this post shows you how to use it.
What an NPS number tells you
NPS comes from one question: “How likely are you to recommend us to a friend or colleague?” People answer from 0 to 10.
Bain & Company, who created the metric, sorts the answers into three groups:
- Promoters answered 9 or 10.
- Passives answered 7 or 8.
- Detractors answered 0 to 6.
Your NPS is the percentage of promoters minus the percentage of detractors. It runs from -100 to +100. You write it as a plain number, with no percent sign.
Here’s an example with made-up numbers. Say 100 customers answer:
- 45 give a 9 or 10. That’s 45% promoters.
- 35 give a 7 or 8. Passives.
- 20 give a 0 to 6. That’s 20% detractors.
NPS = 45 − 20 = 25.
Passives don’t count in the subtraction. They’re still part of the 100, so they pull both percentages down.
That’s all the number says. It doesn’t say why people answered the way they did. It doesn’t say whether 25 is good. It says more people were happy enough to recommend you than weren’t.
Why published “good scores” disagree
Search for a good NPS and you’ll find tables. Good, great, excellent, with neat bands. Those tables often contradict each other.
They disagree because each one measured something different:
- Different companies. One study covers grocers and airlines. Another covers software.
- Different years. Scores moved a lot recently. More on that below.
- Different countries. People in different places use the 0 to 10 scale differently. Qualtrics says respondents differ in what counts as good or bad on it, and advises setting goals by region.
- Different questions. A score from a survey about your whole relationship isn’t the same as a score from a survey sent right after a support call. Qualtrics says NPS should reflect the overall relationship, not one touchpoint.
Bain’s own page doesn’t help with a cutoff either. It gives no threshold. Its only comparison is relative: it says sustained value creators have scores two times higher than the average company. That tells you what winning looks like, not where “good” starts.
We don’t repeat the vendor bands in this post. If two tables give different answers for the same industry, neither is a rule.
What published data exists
We found one source we can stand behind. It’s from the Qualtrics XM Institute, in a piece called “NPS Approaches Pre-Covid Rates,” published 2025-02-06 and updated in December 2025.
The study asked 10,000 US consumers to rate 354 companies across 22 industries, in the second half of 2024. An industry’s score is the average of its companies’ scores.
| Industry (US consumer) | NPS |
|---|---|
| Grocers | 34.3 |
| Retailers | 33.0 |
| Consumer payments | 31.5 |
| Car rentals | 15.8 (lowest of the 22) |
Source: Qualtrics XM Institute, US Consumer study, Q3 and Q4 2024, 354 companies, 10,000 consumers. We checked these figures on 2026-10-14.
Three things to take from this.
Even the lowest industry was above zero. Car rentals came in last of 22 industries at 15.8. In this study, a negative average wasn’t the normal low.
The average moves. The same Qualtrics piece reports the overall score was 30.4 in 2019 and 12 in 2020. That’s a drop of more than 18 points in one year. A “good” score from 2019 wasn’t the same as one from 2020.
It only covers US consumer industries. These are businesses selling to individuals. They aren’t a measure for software, agencies or anyone selling to other companies. We couldn’t find a business-to-business figure from a source we could open and check. If you sell to businesses, look for one from a publisher that says how it collected the data, and read that before you trust it.
How to judge your own score
Three steps. Do them in this order.
1. Compare yourself with yourself
Your own past scores are the most useful comparison you have. Same customers, same product, same question.
Keep it consistent. Ask the same way, at the same point in the customer’s life, to the same kind of people. If you change any of those, you can’t tell whether the score moved or the survey did.
If you’ve never measured before, your first score is your baseline. It isn’t good or bad yet. It’s the number to beat.
2. Find an outside number that matches your customers
Use outside figures as context, never as a target. Before you compare, check:
- Are these consumers or businesses?
- Which country?
- What year?
- How many people answered?
- Was it a relationship survey or one sent after a single event?
If you can’t answer those, don’t put the number in front of your boss.
3. Check the change is real
Here’s the part most people skip. An NPS from a small group is a rough number.
Take the example above: 100 responses, NPS of 25. With that many responses, the true score could sit about 15 points either way. Anywhere from about 10 to about 40 would fit.
Now say last quarter’s score was 18, also from 100 responses, and this quarter it’s 25. That looks like progress. With ranges that wide, the two overlap almost completely. You can’t tell yet.
More responses narrow the range. With 400 responses and the same split, the range shrinks to about 7 or 8 points either way.
Our free NPS calculator works this out for you. Enter your counts and it shows your score with a 95% confidence range. If you’re not sure how many responses you need, the sample size calculator helps.
So when someone asks “is that good?”, you can say:
“We’re at 25, up from 18, but the range is wide, so we’re treating it as flat. Industry averages for US consumer brands run roughly 16 to 34, though that’s a different kind of customer than ours.”
That’s a better answer than any single number.
What to do with the score
The score tells you how many people feel one way or the other. It doesn’t tell you what to fix.
The useful part is the follow-up question. Ask “What’s the main reason for your score?” Then read the answers. Read the detractors first. If twelve of them mention slow replies from support, you know where to start.
SurveyRock’s NPS question reports promoters, passives and detractors for you. On the Growth plan and up, AI themes group the open-text answers so you don’t have to read hundreds by hand.
If you’re starting from scratch, the NPS survey template gives you the question and the follow-up already set up. To learn more about the metric itself, see our NPS glossary entry.
FAQ
Is a negative NPS bad?
A negative score means you have more detractors than promoters. That’s a warning sign. Still, compare it with your own earlier scores before you panic. A negative score from a small sample could also be noise. Check the range.
Is an NPS of 50 good?
It’s high against the industry averages quoted above, which range from 15.8 to 34.3 for US consumer industries. But there’s no official line that makes 50 “good.” Check how many people answered, who they were and how you asked before you celebrate.
Is NPS the same as CSAT?
No. NPS asks how likely someone is to recommend you, and it’s meant to reflect the whole relationship. CSAT asks how satisfied someone was with a specific moment, like a support chat. They answer different questions. See our CSAT glossary entry.
How many responses do I need?
There’s no official number. The more responses you have, the narrower the range around your score. About 100 responses leaves a range of roughly 15 points either way. About 400 narrows it to 7 or 8. Use the sample size calculator to plan.
Calculate your number
Start with where you are. Use the free NPS calculator to get your score and its range. Then use the NPS survey template to find out why people answered the way they did.
Net Promoter®, NPS®, NPS Prism®, Net Promoter System®, and the NPS-related emoticons are registered trademarks of Bain & Company, Inc., NICE Systems, Inc., and Fred Reichheld. Net Promoter Score℠ is a service mark of Bain & Company, Inc., NICE Systems, Inc., and Fred Reichheld.